Our curriculum leader for Music is Frances Smith

Key Stage 1 and 2 Music Curriculum Statement

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• Singing at the local Church's Harvest Celebrations

National Curriculum Purpose of Study

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

Curriculum Intent

At Houghton Primary School we value Music  as an important part of our creative  curriculum. We aspire to develop our pupils’ creativity and self–expression through exposing them to a diverse diet of musical styles and genres chosen from different cultures and periods of history.  Through our curriculum we hope to inspire a lifelong appreciation and curiosity for the subject and to develop our pupils’ ability to:

Listen and respond to different musical style

Be confident performers using their voice and a range of tuned and untuned instruments.

Understand and use a range of musical terminology

Compose their own musical compositions

Evaluate and improve their work through discussion with others

Curriculum Implementation

At Houghton Primary School we  follow the National Curriculum Music  programmes of study, but aim to develop the  children’s skills and experiences further  by making purposeful,  appropriate and fun links to the wider curriculum where possible.  We aim to give the children meaningful opportunities to sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate.  Our music curriculum  is delivered in classroom lessons, weekly singing assemblies, performances  and extracurricular activities. The language  of music is taught in lessons in order that pupils have a shared vocabulary to respond to, critique and evaluate the music they create and encounter.

We follow the ‘Sing Up’ music  curriculum  which offers a  rich and diverse variety of musical encounters  from many genres, cultures and historical periods. Our curriculum progressively develops the children’s musical skills as they  journey through our school. 

Within lessons we utilise the school’s selection of tuned and untuned percussion instruments which includes class sets of glockenspiels. We also take opportunities to use technology whenever appropriate, composing music digitally using 2Beat, 2 Explore and Busy Beats. 

We aim to support children who wish to take up an instrument, currently offering drum lessons within school. 

Curriculum Impact

Assessment of Music skills is ongoing (formative) during lessons. Teachers use the skills statements to assess and use this responsively to support children as necessary.

At the end of each unit teachers assess children’s knowledge through low stakes quizzes and similar activities. Knowledge is revisited over the course of the year to support long term memory and retrieval.

Enrichment